


Qualia

by orphan_account



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-31
Updated: 2009-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:13:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Jonathan cannot tell if he came back from Transylvania at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Qualia

Jonathan Harker does not dream.

If he did, he supposes the Castle would figure prominently, and he has no need of dreams when he stands before it. Seven years gone and still he half expects to walk in and be welcomed, his hand kissed in greeting as his host tells him to leave some of the happiness he has brought with him when he goes.

He is startled by the realisation that he has done exactly what the Count asked of him on that night. He can never be as happy as he was before he entered the Castle, for his happiness lay in ignorance, in innocence, and now he cannot stop looking into shadows, expecting them to look back.

He does not have nightmares of the Count's sharp white teeth.

––

Jonathan Harker does not have nightmares.

He sleeps through the day and wakes as the sun touches the battlements, blood red and sinking in the sky. He keeps meaning to politely rebuff his host, to say 'enough' one night and go to his bed at a sensible time, and wake with the dawn as he used to.

"My friend," the Count says, clasping his hand between his own, and Jonathan cannot get the words to leave his throat. He nods instead, eyes down on their clasped hands, the Count's sharp nails tracing the back of his hand. When he lifts his gaze with effort, the Count smiles. His lips are so red, and his teeth so very white, and Jonathan thinks of blood and snow and knows his thought is in his face by the way the Count releases him with a sigh and turns to lead him to the table where his meal waits.

He no longer asks the Count about his own repast.

It has become something of a habit, to meet night after night and speak of everything and nothing, of ancient battles and legal texts, of the strange ways of both Transylvania and England, and how it began Jonathan can no longer recall. "Tell me," the Count says, voice low and unbearably intimate – though perhaps Jonathan can no longer judge such things, it has been so long since he spoke with anyone else – "what is your query for to-night?"

Jonathan looks up from his untouched meal – he is not hungry, it seems these days he is never hungry – and says, "Perhaps I have no questions for you."

The Count laughs, a rich noise filled with amusement, warm like the fire blazing in the hearth.

Jonathan smiles wanly, recalls asking on his first night after the traditions and superstitions of the country, for reasons now half-remembered, of well-meaning peasants pressing golden charms and amulets and herbs upon him when they heard of where he intended to go, warning him –

Warning him of... of...

What is it he can no longer recall?

"Forgive me," Jonathan says at last, playing with the stem of his wine glass, watching the liquid inside gleam ruby with reflected light, "but I cannot seem to think of a single subject we have not at the very least glanced upon once before. I am poor company to-night it seems."

The Count's cruel red mouth can soften with amusement, and it does so as he looks at Jonathan and smiles, running his tongue over sharp teeth before he speaks. "It is no matter. The night is young yet, and your company pleasant enough without detailed conversation. Did you not sleep well, my friend?"

"Like an infant," Jonathan counters without thought, and his half-hearted attempt to break free of their nightly tradition becomes a spirited discussion upon English idioms and etymology. He finds he does not mind overmuch.

He does not know how much time has passed since he entered the castle. Perhaps it was five days ago. Perhaps it was five weeks, or five months, or five years. Enough time to go from 'Sie' to 'du' when they speak in German, Jonathan's tongue no longer faltering mid sentence to translate a word from mind to mouth.

They speak long into the night, the room filled with the low crackle of burning, the Count's severe face softened only slightly by the firelight and Jonathan's watchful gaze as he holds forth on whatever Jonathan cares to ask. The whole situation feels comfortable and well worn, like the path he used to walk hand-in-hand with Mina, to look out upon the sea in Whitby bay.

He does not dream of an ordinary life.

––

The nights pass.

Jonathan is crowded by memories at night. Mina tells him that he walks in his sleep, that he gets up and wanders down halls that do not exist, opens doors that are not there, and sitting in the parlour with a non-existent book before him, begins to speak to a dead man.

Jonathan does not tell her of the way she reaches up in her sleep and presses her hands against her throat, covering the marks He made.

Jonathan looks at Mina and is afraid.

It used to be that he was afraid of many things – little things, he sees now, petty things – but in the Count's wake he has but one great fear: it is that Mina will one day look at him and see Jonathan as he sees himself. He knows he is being foolish, but he has never been able to convince himself that he deserves her, and suppose one day she wakes and realises what a mistake she has made?

He sees that day coming closer and closer every day. Every day he wakes and his thought is _to-day is the day I lose her_.

The Count is a shadow with depth and substance between them, and Jonathan knows well enough from his captivity that he is not fast enough or strong enough to make it past him. He cannot even try. He sees the expression of puzzled hurt on his wife's face, the way she withdraws in upon herself, whispering 'unclean' but he does not know how to reach her – how to tell her he does not care about her scars or the memory of blood upon her lips or even the way she watches him sometimes, as if the Kukri knife is still in his hands and she expects to feel the edge against her throat.

English reserve has much to say for itself, he thinks, watching her frown in her sleep.

Every time they make love, his fingers unerringly find those marks upon her neck and trace them with care. Every time she looks at him with quiet reproach and he draws back as if burnt. The next morning will be spent in discomfited silence as she looks at him and wonders how much longer she can go on when her husband clearly cannot stand the sight of her shame, as he wonders why she cannot hear what he is saying with no words at all.

"I love you," she says quietly as he leaves for work, and he wonders whether she means it as reassurance or reproach. He looks at her, so beautiful and self-contained, and loves her more than he has the words to express, feeling her declaration like a blow. How can she doubt it, how can she doubt him?

"My young friend," the Count says in his memory, voice rich with indulgent amusement and bizarrely gentle mockery of his youthful naiveté.

 _You were married_ , Jonathan thinks, watching the love of his life as she carefully arranges a scarf around her throat, like a bandage or a medal ribbon, _did you never struggle like this?_

"This is Transylvania and our ways are not your ways."

He remembers that the Count was married twice and widowed the same, and he never spoke of his wives or his children with anything other than wry nostalgic regard. Four hundred years is too long to love memories, if the Count loved at all.

If Jonathan were to live so long, would his regard for Mina, the love that makes him breathe when all he wants is to stop, would it all fade away into dust? In a hundred years, would he still be able to say why he would choose to follow her into death – or the Count's reach?

"My young friend," the Count repeats, a pity-filled sigh.

Transylvania has never been closer, sitting in an English drawing room.

––

The days pass.

They are interminable, long stretches of nothing, filled with choking silence. A man could be driven mad by such quiet, such absence. Too long of it and he could believe he was utterly alone in the world.

In desperation he used to wander the halls, testing every door and finding them all locked. Sometimes he would slam his hands against them in fury and fear, as if he had the strength to break solid oak. Always he ended up in the library, awaiting the Count's return like an abandoned puppy.

Didn't he try to leave once? The Count opened the doors and gave him leave to go, but it was like flinging a bird out of the nest before it has fledged and he could no more depart than he could fly.

 _You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go._

Perhaps he is mistaken, perhaps he does not recall correctly the terms laid out for his stay. Perhaps he is thinking of Bluebeard, except he has no key – the bride has no key – no, that is not right either. How does it go? He identifies a little too closely with the new bride, locked in her husband's castle and bound to his will.

He laughs a little hysterically, filled with new appreciation for the militant suffragettes of his home country, the New Woman demanding the rights of the lowest man. He used to think of himself as a modern man but clearly he could not appreciate the truth of the matter until he had cause to see things from the bride's point of view. It makes as much sense as anything, that one must go to a backward country to understand a forward thought.

He no longer walks the halls during the day.

He became sick with longing for sunlight, for England, for his fiancée – for unlocked doors and new faces. For a while he thought he might die of it, the hunger gnawing at his heart that could not be contented with the familiar foods the Count had prepared to tempt his appetite or the long rambling letters he never saw posted or the foggy morning sunlight.

In his delirium, he dreamed strange dreams he does not care to recall.

He woke one evening with a taste he could not identify on his tongue, something bitter and old and strangely familiar, and even when he recovered his strength he could never get back into the habit of his daytime excursions, his need for them and all they represented sweated out with his long fever.

England has never been further away, sitting in a Transylvanian library.

––

Every house is haunted.

Every cry of pain, every sigh of love, every tear shed, every smile given, it sinks into the walls and stays. Jonathan wonders if he would be able to distinguish the pain from the happiness if the walls could talk.

He doubts if his house is happily haunted.

" _Du bist mein, ich bin dein, des sollst du gewis sein_ ," Jonathan murmurs, a sing-song croon as he tucks a loose strand of his wife's hair behind her ear. There is something purer to German, hard and efficient on the tongue, reaching back, calling for bile and spit and shedding modern civilisation for earthy truths - _Oh, young Herr, must you go?_

Perhaps she will hear him this way, he thinks.

" _Du bist beschlozzen in meinem Herzen, verloren ist das schlüsselein: du musst immer darinne sein_."

"That is nice," Mina says softly, watching him with something in her eyes he does not care to recognize. "Where did you learn it?"

Jonathan pauses, fingers twisting together into a sign he saw often on a journey long ago. "Do you know," he says with a lightness he does not feel, "Now that you ask, I cannot recall. In Vienna, perhaps."

"What does it mean?" she asks; Jonathan feels his shoulders loosen, his body bow with her earnest attempt to keep the slender thread of communication running between them, and wonders when it became so hard to live with love of his life.

"I am not entirely certain of the accuracy, but I was told it translates as 'You are mine, I am yours, you may be sure of this'," her eyes are darker even than his own, but gentler somehow; she is so much stronger than he is. If things had turned out different- Jonathan could not have held the stake. "'You've been locked in my heart, the key has been thrown away – within you must always stay.' It is very old," he adds, for reasons he cannot fathom, looking around him, surprised all of a sudden that he is not in the Castle, surrounded by the reminders of another age. He meets her eyes and realises she can see it too, the Castle in his thoughts.

Once, Jonathan could talk to Mina about anything and everything, never doubted that she loved him, that he loved her, never doubted for a moment his own happiness, and he is reminded that he is no longer the man who could do those things every time he meets Mina's eyes.

Jonathan is his own worst ghost.

––

Every house is haunted.

The Count tells him this when Jonathan is trying to argue the merits of a new house over an old one, saying he could not live pressed by the thought of all those who had lived in a house before him.

"You make your own ghost," the Count says. "Live in a house ten, twenty years, and you will know this. Every room will hold a memory of you." He makes a wide gesture with his hand that encompasses the entire castle around them. "Here in the castle I am surrounded with memories of myself and all I have done here, but they are weak, for the castle is old and has had many others live within its walls. I could not stand, now, to live in new house, making my own ghost. Better that others have been before, that the strongest ghosts are theirs, not yours."

"I had not thought of it that way before," Jonathan admits. He has the strangest sense of vertigo, not that they have discussed this topic in exactly this way before, but that once his answer would have been different. He wonders what it might have been – _I do not believe in ghosts?_

There is a small book in Jonathan's room, filled with notes in abstract curls and lines and dots (shorthand, that is what it's called, how had he forgotten?) that has not had a new entry in – some time. He reads it occasionally, struggling more each time, and is astonished by the man he meets there – rational, stout-hearted Englishman, pouring out his thoughts and dreams and fears onto a page, as if to hide them away where no one can take them from him. He likes the Englishman well enough but he thinks him foolish to have believed such a thing could save him. He wonders if the man's fiancée misses him.

He is tormented at times by the thought of the man in the book; he has been tempted several times to burn it, but always he stops himself for no reason he can comfortably articulate. Perhaps it is the thought of that man being gone forever; even a shorthand existence must be better than nothing, he supposes. He wishes he were so strong. He feels himself buckling underneath the Count's presence, changing in little ways and great ways, becoming what the Count wants him to be, though he cannot say just what that is. Strike him in the right place and he will shatter like a half-finished blade.

Jonathan is his own worst ghost.

––

Jonathan hears a baby crying in the night.

In a moment he is wide-awake, running down the hall in his nightclothes to Quincey's room, knowing as he does it that he is being ridiculous but convinced in some part of his mind that those three women will be there, trying to steal his child.

The nursery is empty, and it takes several minutes for his rational mind to catch up with his fear and remind him that Quincey has long since been moved to another room more befitting for his age now that his hair has been cut and his petticoats exchanged for trousers.

He knows that he would be overreacting even if this were not so. Those women would hardly give Quincey the time to scream.

"Jonathan?" Mina asks, standing uncertainly in the doorway. He wonders what she is afraid of – that he has gone mad, perhaps? He fears that himself at times, and never more than those occasions when he would wake in the nursery, his son tugging hard at his white hair, babbling da repeatedly in his ear to wake him up.

"It's alright," Jonathan says after a long moment, looking away from the empty crib. "Just a bad dream."

"I thought they had stopped," she says, watching him with concerned eyes, and Jonathan shrugs, smiles wryly to conceal his own unsettled thoughts.

"So had I," he admits. He has never told her how Quincey's cries would wake in him the sudden fear of those three women. He could not bear to put such a fear upon her shoulders, though he thinks she will know it for herself when Quincey is older and more curious, willing to disobey parental orders and wander away to satisfy his inquisitiveness.

(Gone to play with the Bloofer Lady)

"I-" he begins, and looks away. Perhaps it will be easier if he cannot see how she has changed, how he has changed. Perhaps, for just a moment, for just long enough, he can slip back into the man he used to be at three-and-twenty, who would not know to hang garlands of garlic flowers about the nursery window or tie a gold cross among the ribbons about his son's neck.

"I thought – was reminded of – those women. In the castle. Of how they – the child in the sack-"

He hears her take a sharp breath. "Jonathan-"

"Can you understand?" he asks, hearing in his voice the anxious whine of a dog that has been kicked without knowing why, and despising himself for it.

"Jonathan," she says, hand resting tentatively on his shoulder. "Why do you persist in trying to carry these burdens alone? I too know what there is to fear in the night, have you forgotten?"

"No," he says (ruby red blood on her mouth, the way she rubbed at her throat, crying unclean). He struggles with the lump in his throat, the fear of himself and the fear for her, the bitterness of secrecy the Count forced upon him that he had not realised lingered in his every action and inaction. "I could not – you already had so much to bear, and I did not – _do not_ know how to make this lighter."

She kisses him. It feels like forgiveness. It solves nothing.

Sometimes Jonathan wonders if he is dreaming this life and living another.

––

Jonathan hears a baby crying in the night.

He tilts his head and listens, trying to pinpoint the distant sound. It sounds hungry, perhaps, or afraid. Jonathan feels a moment's pity – he understands how strong such feelings can be – but nothing more.

He does not bother to seek it out. If he is still and silent he might hear voices crooning to it, carried on wind. Or he might not. He is comforted anyway by this unknowing reassurance that he is not alone in the castle to-night. It will stop screaming eventually.

He bends his head once more to the sheet of paper before him. He should be writing a letter. He has the quill in his hand, hovering over the unmarked page, but nothing comes to mind – no name or face to send it to, no reason to write and no idea of what to write about.

Is there someone waiting for this letter? A woman, like the one in that strange book he read so long ago? What was her name?

He shoves the paper away with sudden irritation, furious with everything and nothing, feeling wronged in some way he cannot explain.

The Count touches the nape of his neck lightly. Once, Jonathan suspects, he would have recoiled, and some part of him still understands the urge. It is absurdly intimate, the touch of another's hand against the neck – it is so close to the head, so vulnerable, large blood vessels and vertebrae so exposed.

He does not flinch. The Count has never quite grasped Jonathan's English horror of being too close to another. "I should be writing a letter," he says plaintively, unable to stop himself.

"Should you?" the Count says, leaning past him to tidy the papers, and like that, the urge is gone, though there was nothing in the Count's voice other than a mild curiosity.

"Is there a child in the castle?" Jonathan asks, watching the Count move to the shelves and bring down old books with cracked leather spines and yellowed pages, filled with dense gothic letters he still struggles to decipher. It occurs to him suddenly to wonder when was the last time he had to light a candle to read by.

The Count smiles thinly. "Not anymore," he says.

Sometimes Jonathan wonders if he is dreaming this life and living another.


End file.
